


Marriage and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

by zuzeca



Series: Mikaela/Scorponok Partners AU [4]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Confrontations, Desert, Married Life, Motorcycles, Other, Xenolinguistics, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 06:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17116169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: Mikaela and Scorponok learn other couples also enjoy relaxing motorcycle trips through the desert.Written for the TF Rare Pairing Weekly Prompt Challenge: Mikaela/Scorponok - desert heat





	Marriage and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

> I am all over the place with impending holidays, but I am apparently determined to continue to row this miniature ship. When I spotted this prompt on the TF Rare Pairing community under the weekly prompt challenge, I just couldn't resist the opportunity to write two of my most beloved, motorcycle-loving, human/alien couples meeting. xD Just a little introspective piece from Mikaela's POV set within my perpetual road trip partner's AU, which has pretty firmly diverged from the canon as of Dark of the Moon. Enjoy!

The sun is long gone by the time Mikaela passes Needles, coasting down from the eastern mountains into the open basin. The moon is large and bright, washing the landscape of color and casting the creosote in dark shadows. Scorponok’s engine is a quiet rumble beneath her, so soothing that if not for the furnace blast of the night air around her, she could fall asleep.

They don’t bother with headlights this far out, slipping between the intermittent, luminous pools that ring the few cars which pass them. Scorponok slows to ride the wake of a semi, barreling down the road with a noise like the rainstorm roar of a desert flood. They’re heading west, along the great roads that snake like arteries across open sand, to where they turn south, to sand and surf and salt air.

She’s packed a snorkel in the duffel bag strapped to Scorponok’s saddle.

It still feels unreal at times, his easygoing willingness to follow her into the wilderness. She thinks sometimes she should feel homeless, adrift; she hasn’t kept a permanent address in five years. And yet she never finds herself worrying about a roof over her head or food in her belly. They run courier jobs in places like this, places beyond the horizon, where the lights of the city fade to a dim memory. It pays cash and she eats on the road. Sleeps next to Scorponok on desert sands and alpine meadows. She’s promised him someday they’ll see the tip of the world.

They break off at Ludlow to pick up water. The windows of the convenience store are ringed with Christmas lights and Spanish radio drifts from a tinny speaker mounted above the gas pumps. The sight of the holiday decorations arrests her. She’s forgotten it’s almost Christmas.

But what reason does she have to remember anymore? Her grandmother ten years gone and her father indifferent to the changing of the seasons. She’d last called him eight months ago, from her burner cell phone, and sat in the darkness of a Kansas frontage road and listened while he talked above the orchestra of frogsong and crickets and had nothing to say in return.

She wonders if he thinks she’s gone mad, running the roads alone like a nomad at her age. He doesn’t know, of course, that she’s never alone.

The parking lot is empty at this hour, save for a lone motorcycle at the curb near the door. It’s a nice one, a Ducati, racing seat and sport tires, all in black. She pulls off her helmet and gives it an appreciative once-over.

Beneath her, Scorponok stiffens, rocking on his tires, the motorcycle equivalent of a hiked tail and quivering telson.

Mikaela snorts and pats his handlebars. “What? You jealous?”

But Scorponok doesn’t appear to be listening. His engine, usually a smooth purr, is growling. The sounds vibrate along her aching legs and set her teeth on edge, infrabass rumbles no machinery made by human hands can replicate.

Mikaela frowns. “Something wrong?”

Scorponok lurches backward slightly and she loses her balance, almost cracks her chin on his handlebars. “Watch it!”

She steadies herself, feet planted on the ground, and scans the darkness. Nothing. She looks, with not a little trepidation, at the store itself.

Scorponok is stone under her.

She hesitates, but she doesn’t have much water left. They might make it to Barstow, but it’ll be rough.

“Stay here,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll be in and out.”

An annoyed buzz zips up her butt along her spine but he doesn’t protest when she dismounts and takes a moment to shake her legs back into shape. She squeezes a comforting hand on one of his handlebars, and makes for the entrance.

The bell above the door jingles as she steps into air conditioned chill. The fluorescent lights ache behind her eyes like the drilling of insect jaws. She blinks, focuses.

Ordinary rows of bright candy and packets of snacks. The store is deserted, just a bored-looking cashier leaning behind the counter with a newspaper spread on the glass top. He looks up when she enters, makes a motion of acknowledgement. Mikaela breathes and steps in the direction of the drink coolers.

It’s then that she spots the guy.

He’s standing in front of the center cooler, back to her. He’s big, not tall but brickhouse solid, filling the seams of his jet black motorcycle jacket. The jacket itself is eerily featureless, the butter-soft look of fine leather, but unrecognizable as any brand she’s ever seen. The guy has a bristle mop of sandy brown hair, cropped short but not too short. Holds himself with an easygoing confidence, like he’s got balls of steel. Must be the owner of the Ducati.

She pauses, taking him in, mindful of Scorponok’s unease. The guy’s not behaving in an overtly worrying manner, just standing there, attention fixed by the rows of colorful bottles and cans. True he might be a creep, but she’s got legs and teeth.

And an alien lover made of solid metal on the opposite side of the cinderblock wall.

As she moves closer, she realizes he’s talking. Low and under his breath, like he’s mumbling to himself.

“I was trying to tell you they’re out of goddamn chocolate milk,” he says. “What are you having a fit about?”

She frowns. She can't see a Bluetooth. Is he mentally ill? She’s hardly one to judge over talking to oneself, but it’s still peculiar.

He glances over his shoulder, catches her eye. His are blue and clear, lit by the fluorescent lights. He grins at her, sheepish, the kind of grin that would usually put her hackles up coming from a strange man that big. But...the intention behind it is empty. She knows how to read the swirling riptides in the way men look at her, and there’s nothing.

“Am I in your way?” he says. “Just debating with myself over the age-old Coke and Pepsi war. Here, you go ahead.”

He turns to move, and just for a split second, the barest moment, she sees something in his eyes. A flicker, like the silver belly of a fish in a deep river. Something alive, something not quite human.

She freezes. So does he, stepping aside, his gaze going wary even as his affable smile remains fixed in place. He backs away from the cooler, headed for the candy bars, but she can see him watching her. He slips out of sight behind a shelf.

Her chest tight, she grabs the first three water bottles that touch her fingertips. They’re cold and wet with condensation, slipping in her grasp as she piles them on the counter. She rummages in her pocket, finds a couple of folded bills. Waits the agonizing moments as the shopkeeper counts back her change. Hurries out the door, bottles in hand.

The night air is like an oven, the liquid pool of light around the store a teeming mass of insects. She glances left and right as she heads back in Scorponok’s direction.

The man is standing by the Ducati.

His gaze is fixed on Scorponok, whom she is relieved to see is still sitting in absolute stillness next to the curb.

The guy’s got one hand resting on the handle of his own bike, his helmet dangling from the other. There’s a silver packet protruding from the back pocket of his jeans.

Her fear-sharpened senses register it as a bag of Hershey’s kisses.

She has about a half second to process this before the guy turns to look at her. A quarter turn, keeping one eye trained on Scorponok.

“Nice bike,” he says. “Can’t say I recognize the model.”

“Nice jacket,” she retorts. “Can’t say I recognize the label.”

He pauses, then lifts his helmet and sets it with a clunk on the saddle of his bike. He steps back, turning to face them, keeping both her and Scorponok in view.

“Don’t want any trouble,” he rumbles, and there’s a faint, infrabass buzz to his words that sends the hairs on her arms standing on end.

Scorponok breaks.

He surges up out of his motorcycle form in an explosion of moving parts and whirring gears. Mikaela bolts for his side, moving behind the whirl of snapping palps and under the canopy of his arching telson. She clamps a quelling hand on one tergite and squares her shoulders. Not attacking, but an unequivocal threat display.

The man...transforms in kind.

He leaps back in shock, his jacket sprouting a forest of pitch tentacles that snap around his body with unbelievable speed and elasticity. They ripple up and down his body, engulfing him, up and over his head like a monk’s demonic cowl and then—

She’s looking at a monster.

Teeth are what she registers first, rows and rows of needles as long as her hand, like the black gape of a deep sea fish. Eyes without pupils, huge and white and staring. The monster snarls, a tongue that has to be two feet long lolling from its mouth, dripping with saliva.

_Holy shit._

But the monster doesn’t approach. It’s bigger than the guy, grown in height and breadth. It squares off, arms lined with muscles like steel cables and capped with fists like bowling balls.

Scorponok’s claws raise.

In a panic, Mikaela reaches out and grabs one of Scorponok’s chelae.

“Wait!” she blurts.

Scorponok flinches at both her shout and the yank on his chelicerae, and hisses at her and the monster. The monster takes a step back, still leaning forward, still in a ready stance.

 **“Cybertron,”** it thunders.

Mikaela gapes at it. Thinking quickly, she presses a quelling hand down on Scorponok’s head, one of the dozens of non-verbal cues they’ve worked out after so long in each other’s heads and spaces.

_Let me handle this, please?_

After a few tense moments, Scorponok lowers his palps, though his tail stays arched and quivering. Mikaela swallows hard and addresses the monster.

“You know us?”

The monster doesn’t answer right away. It straightens, looks the two of them over.

 **“We know of you,”** says the monster. **“Passed through genetic memory over thousands of generations spawned. You are known to the old ones of Klyntar.”** Its large eyes narrow. **“Mostly for excessive warring, burning of resources, and causing unsightly amounts of noise.”**

Scorponok buzzes his chelicerae against each other. The monster’s head jerks and it bares its fangs.

Mikaela nods. “Fair enough. We’re not with them anymore.”

**“Deserters?”**

“War refugees,” she says, firmly. “I’m Scorponok’s liaison with Earth; he lives with me now. He’s my partner.”

Something about this seems to catch the monster’s attention. **“Partners?”**

She nods. “Where he goes, I go.”

The monster digests this. **“We are also refugees,”** it admits at last. **“We were one of a small invasion force, but we were accepted by one of yours, and chose to reject our kin.”**

Mikaela lets out a slow, deep breath, then offers it a shaky smile. “Then we’re all good aren’t we? What’s your name?”

 **“We are Venom** . **”**

She strokes a soothing hand across Scorponok’s exoskeleton and straightens. “I’m Mikaela, and he’s Scorponok.”

Venom regards them for a minute, then black flesh starts to recede off him like oil seeping into sand, leaving behind the man from the convenience store. He shakes himself and smiles back at her, a genuine one this time.

“Guess we’re doing introductions all around,” he says. “I’m Eddie.” He fishes in his back pocket and extracts the bag of chocolate. “Want to share, one alien host to another?” His sparkling eyes let her know he’s fully aware of the pun.

She stares at him, then muffles a laugh into her hand. “Alright,” she says. “But not here.”

There’s a rest stop further into the desert. They pace each other like trick riders, interweaving like helical strands of DNA, competitive, hairpin turns that human reflexes can’t hope to match. Eddie parks his bike in the rest stop and Scorponok transforms to follow them up onto a pile of rocks above it. The stars are brilliant even this near to dim streetlights and Mikaela climbs up onto Scorponok’s back while Eddie plunks down on bare stone. He tears open the bag of candy and offers her one.

She takes it and opens her bottle. The clarity of the water cuts through the sweetness of the chocolate. As she recaps her water, she realizes he’s talking again, low and quiet, not directed at her.

“Come on,” he says. “You love sharing, it’ll be fine. Come on out.”

To her shock, something dark and slick emerges from the shoulder of his jacket, unwinding like a python. She can just glimpse pale eyes against the blackness, and the fanged, serpentine head looks in her direction with a slight, nervous air.

She and Venom watch each other as Eddie unwraps a chocolate kiss and holds it up. Venom’s eyes turn away and candy vanishes from Eddie’s fingers. He murmurs something soothing that she can’t catch and touches Venom’s face with a familiar, subdued affection.

_Oh._

_They’re_ **_partners_ **.

The realization warms her from within and she rests a hand above Scorponok’s optics. His chelicerae shift and click with curiosity and she shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she says. “Just thinking.”

His tail curls over his back slowly, lowering until it rests, with surprising delicacy, on her shoulder. She loops an arm around to hold him close.

Scorponok tenses and she realizes that Venom has extruded further out and is approaching them to investigate. His head weaves through the desert air, approaching and withdrawing as though his vision is somewhat dim. He dips down to put himself on level with Scorponok’s eyes. His mouth doesn’t open fully, but a series of clicking noises emerge.

Scorponok rises on his legs in shock, but Venom clicks with greater insistence and slowly he sinks back down. One chelae slowly extends in curiosity and Venom stretches out a small tendril and bumps against it. Scorponok clicks in return, layering on a series of beeps and chirps.

They both withdraw, and Mikaela lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Where did you learn that?” she says.

Venom’s head rises in her direction. **“Genetic memory for my people is very good,”** he says dryly. His voice has the same bass quality it did when he and Eddie were forming the big fighter by the convenience store. **“You are quite fortunate. He adores you.”**

The offhand statement catches her like a fist to the gut and leaves her fumbling, flat footed. “I...I know,” she says, suddenly overwhelmed because she’s been in Scorponok’s fucking head, she knows how he feels, how she feels about him, but hearing it stated out loud and so casually feels somehow different. “Is that what he said?”

 **“Among other things.”** Venom withdraws back towards Eddie, but instead of sinking back into his skin, he loops around his shoulders like a gelatinous scarf.

Eddie watches her, a small smile playing about his lips. “How long?” he says.

“Five years.”

He whistles softly. “Well,” he says. “That’s encouraging.”

“It’s been worth every minute.”

“We know,” he says.

“You two?”

“A year tomorrow.”

“Happy anniversary.”

He laughs. “You ever see something like this when you imagined getting hitched?”

Did she imagine anything like this? Open road and open sky and the joy of a love from distant stars in her mind and her bed and her home, even if that home was wide brown land and jewel horizons? Two lonely hearts cleaving to each other?

“Yeah,” she says. “I think I saw something just like this.”


End file.
